The Story of Sly Cooper
by TheMysteriouswatcher
Summary: My name is Sylvester James Cooper, and this is my life.
1. Chapter 1

They say that love is a power with zero defects. They say that love conquers all. They say that love can't be beaten. Love has many defects. Love cannot conquer all. Love CAN be beaten.

I should know that. I should know that love can be beaten and that it has a lot of defects. Why, you ask. Well, it's not that hard to figure out. I'm a hopeless romantic, who never gets to see a happy ending. I'm someone you call a loser, someone who never gets anything he wants. Heh. That is all too true, I'm telling you that.

You may wonder who I am. It is actually not in this business. Nothing is at the moment. Everything I know is that everything that I had, everything I had built up for myself, everything I had created, was lost. Everything was lost, just because of that little, silly lie. I don't know what exactly made me do it, but I know that it was definitely not something with zero defects. It wasn't something that could conquer all. It was clearly not something that couldn't be beaten.

If you ask me, I think it was something evil.

You're probably pretty curious by now. I can't really blame you for that, I mean, who wouldn't be curious? I think that everybody would be. I can't exactly blame you for asking either. I would ask too if I were in your shoes. But I don't really know if I'm ready to tell anyone. Especially not since I've not gotten over this whole thing. I haven't gotten over _her_.

Now you're probably fuming by annoyance of me not telling you what the fuck I'm yapping about. Again, I can't blame you for that. And again, I can't tell if I'm ready to tell you what exactly has happened. But a lot of things have happened, that I can safely say. Man, a lot is an understatement. It feels like it has been thousands and thousands of things that had smashed into mine mental body, causing more pain by every single thing.

Well, I guess I can tell you that the things are all about love. I don't even understand why it would be something else. I never get to see someone who stays with me for more than a year. Like I said, I'm a hopeless romantic who just gets disappointed time and time around. I just never get to see anything happy.

But here I am now, blabbering about my life problems. You probably have a lot of other things to do. You shouldn't mind me. I'll see something happy soon. But in case you want to know, what's the hurt in telling you? Nothing, I guess. Well, it's a very long story, but if you have the time to listen, I guess it can't hurt so much.

My name is Sylvester James Cooper, and this is my story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Previously on Lost Souls:**

**They say that love is something that can't be beaten.**

**Love CAN'T conquer all.**

**My name is Sly Cooper, and this is my story.**

It all began that night. That little thing that destroyed my world. That little thing that took the woman I love away from me. I will tell you everything, but I'm warning you, this story is very emotional. This is a story that contains it all, contains everything that you want to read in books. I'm not gonna go into detail, so you'll have to be quiet, listen and hope that you learn something.

It all started back a few months ago. I was home, home with my partner Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox. To make a long story short, I had been long hunting for the legacy of my bloodline, the famous Cooper Vault. When I was a kid, I was robbed my childhood. A gang of criminals, a gang known as the Fiendish Five broke into my house. Dad managed to hide me in our closet with the famous Cooper Cane, but he couldn't save himself, nor could he save my mother. And he couldn't save our precious family heirloom, the Theivius Raccoonus.

Again, just to make a long story short, I managed to steal back all the pages the fiends had stolen. Their leader, Clockwerk, had hunted my family for decades, just so that he could erase them from the history of thieves and then find himself the only one and true master thief. In order to do so, he had immortalized himself by replacing his body parts with mechanic parts. It made him immortal, so that he could hunt the Coopers down without finding rest.

I managed to beat him in the end, at a place known as the Krack-Korav Volcano. He wanted to kill me, so that no one could uphold the bloodline of the Coopers, but I managed to stop him. With the help of Carmelita, we managed to defeat the fiendish ancient owl. And then, that lovely kiss… Well, I'm trailing off here, but I'm telling you, that was one heck of a kiss. Anyways, I thought that I could live my life in piece and steal just like normal.

Boy was I wrong.

After a series of events, it turned out that someone had stolen the Clockwerk parts in an attempt to revive him. It turned out to be the parrot Arpeggio, who tried to take over the world or something like that. We managed in the end to confront him, but the fiend was surprised and then killed by a new enemy call ''Clock-la''. It involved the lovely Inspector Neyla, who placed herself in the Clockwerk frame. Unfortunately for her, we managed to defeat her, but the tigress was beyond rescue.

We found out that the source of the ever-lasting pieces of Clockwerk turned out to be something called the ''Hate chip''. With it, Clockwerk could live forever and hunt us Coopers down. When we defeated Clock-la, we managed to find it, with the help of our genius Bentley. Bentley got injured in the process, however, so now he is bound to a wheelchair. This had a lot of effects to our gang, but that doesn't belong to this subject, so I'll tell you another time.

Carmelita destroyed the Hate Chip, and within the blink of an eye, the power that had allowed the Clockwerk parts to keep their durability vanished. The pieces decayed in their place, as if time had caught up with the ancient defeated bird and because of the parts no more being immortal, they just vanished.

To get back on track, I finally thought that I could rest from all the events and finally gain access to the Cooper Vault. Then, it appeared that a new villain had appeared. The viscous Dr. M had claimed that he had bought the island, and all its belongings. To make a long story short, in the end I took a blow for Carmelita. Before that, when I was being crushed to death in the hands of some kind of mutated beast, I thought about her. I thought it would be my last moments in life. But just then, guess who came and saved me? Right. The lovely Inspector Fox. I had realized that I had never confessed my true feelings for her, and I promised myself that I would if I survived this. When I took that blow from Mr. M that was meant for her, I saw some kind of strange opportunity, and I faked that I had received some kind of memory loss. Don't ask me why I did that, because I did not know at that time, and to be honest, I still don't know. I guess it was because I wanted to be with her so bad.

It was after that I thought that I had found the perfect life. I could be with Carmelita without having her chase after me, and I could actually tell that she liked me too. Not out-right love, but still. I knew that she had feelings for me, feelings she had concealed because of her profession. That's probably why she lied and said that I was her constable. She took advantage of the situation. But I didn't care. I could live my life with my love without having her trying to lock me in behind bars.

Then, it all went downhill. I guess she started to notice that I was uneasy most of the time and that I was hiding something. As a matter of fact, I couldn't simply live this life either. I wanted there to be something between us, something romantic. That's why I did it. That's why I started to act strange and weird. I can still remember that conversation so clearly.

-''Please, Carmelita… Try to understand, please!'' I had begged her after telling her the truth about my so-called memory loss. At first, she had looked at me in distrust, and then she had started swearing in her native Spanish. To top it off, she started to cry. Tears, salty tears streamed down her cheeks. She had no idea how much it hurt me to see her cry. She probably didn't care what I thought.

-''No! I don't want to understand. I don't want to hear anything you have to say, you no-good, lying piece of shit!'' she had yelled at me, her voice was fuming with pure anger. I could tell that she was obviously pissed.

-''But Carmelita, please! Just try to let me explain.'' I raised my voice slightly, angered over the fact that she didn't want to listen. But her hissy fit had ended and was replaced with an eerie silence. She just stared down into the floor.

-''Get out, Cooper.'' She whispered, barely in hearing volume for me. Then she raised her voice and shouted the same words. When I stood still in sadness, she reached for the shock pistol hanging on the nearby shelf. That was enough of a signal for me. It was clearly time to get out, so I grabbed my Cooper heirlooms and jumped out the window. The last thing I saw before I did so was her cold, disappointed face.


	3. Chapter 3

You could think that this story would have a happy ending. I would return to my Carmelita, she would forgive me and we would live the rest of our lives together. You don't know how wrong you are in case you think that. I warned you that this story wasn't one of the happy kinds. Now, as you all now, love does usually end well. Well, it did not end well for me. Not at all.

Carmelita would never forgive me. She would never understand that what I did I did because of my love for her. I also understood that her ghost would forever haunt me, eternally remind me of what I had destroyed. I couldn't possibly take it in any way possible. I thought that I was going to go crazy. Until I met that guy. I don't know his name, but he called himself ''The MITC.'' Well, I'll get to him later, but for now it's best that I finish what I started here.

So I ran. I simply ran. I ran and I ran and I ran. It felt like I had ran for decades without stop, but it was just a couple of blocks away from Carmelita's house. I thought that I should perhaps check on her, see how she is doing right now. I found a skyscraper for the job, which was, of course, no big deal for me to scale. After I got up to the roof, I whipped out the tool that had helped me so many times in the various heist I had pulled off.

The Binocucom.

By using the built-in zoom function, I managed to capture Carmelita in the lens. She was very far away right now, but the enhanced Binocucom that Bentley had made me easily got the job. I saw how Carmelita, standing on her balcony, had her head buried in her hands and she was shivering slightly. I could easily tell that she was crying. Then, she looked up, and my statement was confirmed. I could see the tears roll down her cheeks. It really hurt me to see her cry.

That was the last I saw from her before she turned around and went back inside, closing the balcony door after her. I remained looking at her through the Binocucom for a few more minutes before she completely disappeared out of my view. What She was going to do I did not know, but I guessed she was going to sleep, for it was late in the night and by the looks of it all, she was very tired.

I had placed my Binocucom back into the red purse located on my thigh. I had really liked the feeling from it pressing against my leg. It reminded me of all the great times before ''Constable Cooper.'' Everything we had done together, all the way back to that orphanage. Our first real heist, a little something called ''Cookie Connection.'' I could clearly remember what I had said those few minutes after the ''crash-out''.

-''Isn't this the most sweetest-tasting failure yet, guys?'' I had said while we munched on those delicious cookies. And indeed it was. I could also remember Bentley panicking, yelling to me over our ''Can-o-phone'' that time was running out, and Murray being worried about there being no cookies for him. Ah, all those sweet memories.

Well, to put us back in track, I was completely lost in my thoughts that I didn't even notice the alarm ringing in the distance. It was first I did so when I stopped thinking about the memories and started thinking about just general thievery. It was great just to live the normal life of the master thief Sly Cooper. But all that had been shattered when I became ''Constable Cooper''. No more thievery for me.

I jumped off the skyscraper and used the old, but handy Ninja Spire jump that my ancestor, Rioichi Cooper had thought me, to land on a small spire sticking out from a building. I used a few more acrobatic moves to get down to street level and from there I jumped up on another building. Using my speed, I quickly got to the source of the piercing sound. The entrance was in a complete disorder. Everything was either flipped over or savaged. I proceeded inside.

The inside was way worse than the entrance. There was a dead security guard lying in a pool of blood on the ground, and by the looks of it, the crooks had already broken into the valve. I looked around in order to see someone, but to no avail. There wasn't anyone in here except for me and the dead security guard.

I stepped into the broken valve, only to find more disorder. There was another security guard lying in a pool of blood on the floor with a bullet hole in his forehead. I collected myself and thought about who could have done this. My pulse was pretty high too; I had just seen two dead people lying on the ground. I bent down and examined the dead guard lying on the ground. I had limited field medication training, but it was no doubt that this guard had been shot in the head with some kind of old-fashion revolver.

The next thing I knew, I felt something cold and metallic against the back of my head. I dared not look back at all, but I knew I had to do something soon; someone was pointing a gun to the back of my head.

-''Well, well, well.'' A voice, which was definitely masculine, belonging to the creature behind me started with a chuckle. ''It seems that my idea about you Coopers always get into trouble is confirmed.'' I believed myself to recognize that voice. As if it belonged to someone I had known for decades.

My reactions were lightning fast. Without thinking, I shoved my hell into the lower leg of my unknown adversary. He fell back in pain and his only vocabulary reaction was a low toned grunt. I whipped out y cane which had been situated on my back, carefully minding not to knock the Thievius Raccoonus off of my belt. The man before me had apparently recovered from my recent assault and was now aiming the gun at my head.

-''Goodbye, Cooper. Your resistance was brave but to no avail.'' He growled with a grin. ''I'll be seeing you in hell.'' His voice was raspy and dark, like a chainsaw that was out of fuel, or like a car more so. I saw the gun in his hand. It was a gold-colored Smith and Wesson. I laughed at my own statement. ''Like it's the time for a weapons class!''

Then, it seemed as my life flashed before my eyes. Standing before me wasn't that armed robber, but the woman I have loved for so long. She looked at me with a smile. It filled my heart with happiness. Then, it seemed as if I weren't that sad, depressed, lonely raccoon anymore. I was a happy raccoon. Carmelita laughed that special laugh of hers; you know the one that gets me completely spellbound?

Then, Carmelita disappeared, making me worried again, and was replaced by my two best friends, Bentley in the wheelchair, and Murray in the race car. It reminded me of their current lives. Murray racing for his life, and Bentley and Penelope together. The sight that came before my eyes made my heart ache. Penelope appeared mysteriously out of nowhere and joined her boyfriend. It reminded me of the crumbled relationship I had with Inspector Fox. How it hurt me to know that I had lost her, probably forever.

It's a pretty good story, ain't it? I told you that it would take some time to listen to it. I've been thinking about all that, what I could have changed, what I could have done and said, but to just no avail. The past is the past, and there's nothing you can do about it. Unless you build a time machine or something… how I need Bentley now!

Well, there I was. I had destroyed my only chance for true love, and worse, I had gotten myself into a really sticky situation. There was an armed robber pointing his gun at me. I didn't doubt for a second that he would hesitate to kill me. He was probably some psychotic freak who had escaped from the mental clinic. But then again, we have the same job, we both thieve, but I'm no psychic freak, now am I?

Maybe I am…

But there I was, face to face with a cold-blooded killer. I didn't know at all what to do. But then again, I thought that I might as well let him shoot me; the one reason that I wanted to live had left me. Carmelita had left me. It felt like someone had torn out my heart and replaced with a big piece of nothing. That's the most accurate description I can give you at the moment.

In what I thought to be the last moments of my life, I thought about all the fun things that we had done together. It was very good and very amusing times, those few months we had together before the truth unveiled. Like that time we had a chili pepper contest. We were going to eat of the so called ''Naga Viper'', one of the hottest chili's in the world. I can remember it so clearly, even if it was so long ago.

I was sitting on the couch back at home, with my arm around Carmelita's shoulders. It had just been a long day at Interpol, and we had worked for so long and so hard. We had managed to book at least four different criminals, every single one of them recognizing my real self, asking why I was dressed as a cop. I ignored these taunts, as they would help blow my cover for Carmelita.

We were watching a food show, where the contestants were ordered to make the spiciest, but still eatable, food. Then, Carmelita had suggested we tried a chili eating contest, to see who could last the longest without drinking milk. At first, I said it was plainly stupid, due to the fact that I had read that eating very hot chili's could result in downgrading of the taste system, but Carmelita used her natural woman's charm to convince me. I'm telling you, I would do anything for that smile of hers.

She went into the kitchen and a minute or so later she returned with two plates as well as two large glasses of milk. The plates, I presumed, held the infamous ''Naga Vipers''. My assumption was right when she sat the plates down on the table. One for me and then one for herself. I looked at her eyes. They were full of life, as always. They had the same color as mine, but not the same tone. They were slightly lighter and rounder, more inviting, if you will, than mine.

The size of those chili's surprised me. They weren't bigger than my pinky, and still they could hold all that power of chili? I was baffled. I picked mine up and weighed it in my hand. ''Couldn't weigh more than a couple of grams.'' I told myself. But as a matter of fact, I dint give a shit, if you will. I then put the chili close to my mouth. I could feel the strength of the fruit just by having it close to my mouth. ''This ain't gonna be good…'' I thought moments before Carmelita gave me the look that told me to start. I quickly as hell placed the chili fruit in my mouth and started to chew.

I hadn't ever eaten anything that strong before. It felt as if someone had placed a burning torch in my mouth. It felt so hot. That chili was no joke, that was for sure. I quickly as hell chewed it up and then, when the chili was pulverized into a soft powder of super-hot substance. It slid down my throat very slowly, like some molten cheese being poured out a container. The strength increased for every single second it was in my throat.

But bad turned to worse when it reached my stomach. It felt like someone had poured lava down into my stomach, boiling hot lava which increased in heat for every single millisecond. I must have made some funny faces when I chewed and swallowed, because when I looked at Carmelita, she was rolling on the floor, laughing, the chili was spewing out her mouth.

-'' ¡Oh, qué cara divertida, Sly!'' She laughed. I could tell that she was having a good time. Of course I couldn't understand what she had said, but I could hear it was something in Spanish, and out of my very limited Spanish education, I understood that it was something that was very funny. I was just about to respond when it felt like someone was ripping my intestines inside-out. Apparently, it caused Carmelita even more laughing, because when I looked up again, it looked like she was ready to cough her lungs up.

I got up from the floor and gripped my stomach, flailing about, trying to resist the effects of the ''Naga Viper.'' That was very hard; I can easily tell you that. My intestines knotted themselves up, man! Wouldn't you be like that if your intestines were knotting up? Well, I don't think you can blame me for thinking that way, because that goddamn chili pepper was frigging hot. And I can also safely say that I'm not doing that again, so don't even try to convince me here, ok?

Back on our track, we had both lasted a minute straight with no milk at all. I was surprised that I had even lasted for ten seconds. As a matter of fact, it surprised me that I had even managed to put it into my mouth. Have you ever eaten a ''Naga Viper'' before? If you have, then you'd know what I was talking about. Goddamn hot-ass chili peppers. I am quite surprised by those champs on Youtube who manage to not only eat it, but also have no milk at all with it. I could never even think about going through that.

My suspect ion was confirmed when I found that I had gulped up half my glass of milk already. I was relieved when the cooling liquid entered my mouth and made its way down my throat, past my burning glottis, and then down all the way into my stomach.

-''Seems that you lose, partner!'' I heard Carmelita's high-pitched voice squeak out. By the sound of it, it wasn't exactly a dance of roses for her either. I had heard her curse in Spanish about something that was very hot. But I could somehow understand her doing so. This pepper was really hot. I wouldn't try to eat it again even if I were paid. That's one thing for sure.

Ah, all these memories. But even the strongest of memories could make the inevitable happen. I was about to get shot by a bank robber, I was about to get murdered. I wondered what Carmelita would say, what she would react. Maybe I should make it look like I committed suicide. Maybe I could negotiate with the madman and made him shoot me so that it looked like suicide? Or maybe even shoot myself. Whatever, I thought, because it would all end here and now anyways.

-''Alright, Cooper. Time to meet your maker!'' his raspy voice growled. I closed my eyes.

Then he pulled the trigger.


	4. Chapter 4

**Previously on Lost Souls:**

**Carmelita has turned me down.**

**I observed her from a skyscraper.**

**A robbery has occurred and I've been caught investigating the crime scene.**

I had closed my eyes and awaited the small bullet that would take from me my life. The robber was crazed. I had been caught investigating a dead guard inside a local bank that had currently been robbed. When examining his body, someone ambushed me. I didn't see who or what he was, because he was clad in this strange hood. As if he carried a hood made out of shadows…

So I had given it up then and there. I knew that I couldn't make it out of this one, and I didn't even feel like trying. Carmelita had packed me in, and I knew that I couldn't get her back in any way. It hurt me so much. Not only that I couldn't possibly be with her anymore, but also by the fact that a mental picture of her face would always torment me. That's why I didn't care about stopping the guy.

So I had just closed my eyes and awaited the bullet to hit me. But when it never did, I grew curious. I had seen him hold it in his shadow-colored hand. I had heard the bang of the bullet and I could even smell the smoke from the barrel. I closely opened my eyes, actually wanting it to be like as if I had been shot but I hadn't felt any pain. But of course it wasn't going to happen like that.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the strange robber in front of me. I guess I should have told you about the whole shadows thing before, since you're probably pretty damn curious what happened. Well, the story goes on…

The robber was still standing in front of me. But the first thing I saw was that the shadows that had surrounded him before were no longer there. He looked like a normal person. Just a normal tiger, nothing more and nothing less. But I could see that his face was pale and that massive amounts of sweat had started to pearl down his cheeks. He blinked once before falling to the ground, dead.

Behind him was a completely different silhouette. It looked a little like him, also clad in shadows, but of a different kind. As if the shadows were a part of him, and not just floating around him. Just then, a light broke out from behind him and burned all that darkness away, like fire burns paper. I squinted through the sharp light that stung in my eyes and I could see him now. He had returned.

-''Well, if it isn't Sly Cooper. Who could expect you to appear at a bank at a time like this?'' he happily exclaimed with a grin. I could easily make out his face features: short black hair and green eyes complemented with almost black fur which made it look like his hair fused together with the fur on his face. I thought he looked ridiculous, like something you would put in a circus.

-''Knock it off!'' I said angrily. I didn't want to be accused of a crime that I hadn't committed. ''You knew it was him!'' I said with a growl and pointed at the dead man on the floor between us. He looked down and gave off a short chuckle before looking back up at me. His face expression worried me.

-''Anyways, why aren't you with your Carmelita?'' he asked. I wanted to shout at him then, I wanted to lunge at him and start beating the shit out of the guy, but something told me I couldn't do that, no matter how much I wanted to. He didn't know about the confession. He couldn't know about it.

-''We... had an argument.'' I said quietly and did my best to control the lump growing in my throat. Apparently, it wasn't good enough, as he, with a very kind voice, asked if I was sad. I just shrugged it all off of me and did my best to sound brave.

-''Don't worry. We'll be back together in no time.'' I happily exclaimed, fully knowing that that wasn't going to happen within the nearest future. Not even maybe in this life. He shook his head and approached me. Even if he was at least a head taller, I wasn't afraid of him.

-''Do you need to talk to anyone about it?'' he asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. Just the bare embrace of it made my whole body shiver. But I ignored the uncomfortable feeling and roughly shook off his hand. ''I'm fine.'' I responded with a cold voice. ''Mitc.'' I added, using the nickname he had told me before. He reacted to it with a weird smile which sent shivers down my spine.

-''Suit yourself. But what are you going to do now then, thief?'' he said and made an extra delaying on the thief which made me want to smack him across the face. But I swallowed my anger and quietly answered a quick ''I don't know.'' He nodded and then looked up at the sky.

-''Ah, full moon.'' He said with a long sigh. ''Is there anything more beautiful?'' To this, I simply shrugged. The moon was the last thing I cared about right now.

-''Aren't you supposed to place Culex behind bars?'' I asked, quickly changing the subject. Culex was an old criminal master thief as well who was living in his homeland. Mitc was also part-time police, but barely appeared in the police quarters. He was currently hunting down the one called Culex. Culex wasn't his real name, but that's what everybody called him. As a matter of fact, no one knew his real name, not even Mitc.

-''Nah, I got resigned from that case. HQ decided it took too long for me to bust his ass, so I retired from this shit and had me some wonderful cash.'' I twitched at the word ''Cash.'' It felt not like normal money, but more of that money you get from thievery and games. He reacted to that twitch with but a smile.

-''Really? And where did you get these ''cash'' then, Mitc?'' I asked him with a kind of teasing voice. I noticed that it had effect, because his smile disappeared and was replaced with simply nothing. For a spilt-second there, I thought that the shadows previously surrounding him were going to return.

-''None of your business, Cooper.'' He snarled in a dark voice. After those words, he simply disappeared. He had done that a few times before. And I was the only one who knew how he could do it. But that's another story.


End file.
